Skip to main content

Folger sez students don't need to learn Shakespeare bio

The Folger Shakespeare Library education department publishes a web-log titled  Making a Scene: Shakespeare in the Classroom that gives teachers advice on how to help students learn about the Bard. On Thursday, the topic of the post was "Teaching Shakespeare FAQs" that is a list of basic questions and answers about how to handle Shakespeare in the classroom. One of the questions considered basic by the Folger had to do with Shakespeare's biography:
Do I need to teach about the Globe Theatre or Shakespeare’s Life?The simple answer is “No.” While telling students that Shakespeare had three children and that he and Anne Hathaway had to get married might be interesting, it really doesn’t help them understand the plays. It’s much better to integrate some facts about Elizabethan life when they come up in the plays. So when Francis Flute protests, “Let me not play a woman. I have a beard coming” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that’s the perfect opportunity to explain the Elizabethan stage convention of young men playing the female parts.
So, according to the Folger, knowing who wrote the plays doesn't help readers understand the plays, but knowing some facts about the period helps readers understand specific aspects of the plays? Knowing SOME history is helpful, but knowing the history of the author ". . . really doesn't help [students] understand the plays."

Is this irrational double-speak the level to which a great institution is reduced in order to avoid the Shakespeare authorship controversy? Would any rational pedagogue say the same about teaching the work of Eugene O'Neill or Arthur Miller? 

We agree that teachers shouldn't perpetuate Shakespearean myths; but don't dump the search for infant truth out with the murky Stratfordian bathwater.

Resources:
http://folgereducation.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/teaching-shakespeare-faqs/

Popular posts from this blog

Was King Richard III a Control Freak? Science News ... from universities, journals, and other research organizations   Mar. 4, 2013 — University of Leicester psychologists believe Richard III was not a psychopath -- but he may have had control freak tendencies. University of Leicester psychologists have made an analysis of Richard III's character -- aiming to get to the man behind the bones. Professor Mark Lansdale, Head of the University's School of Psychology, and forensic psychologist Dr Julian Boon have put together a psychological analysis of Richard III based on the consensus among historians relating to Richard's experiences and actions. They found that, while there was no evidence for Shakespeare's depiction of Richard III as a psychopath, he may have had "intolerance to uncertainty syndrome" -- which may have manifested in control freak tendencies. The academics presented their findings on Saturday, March 2 at the University

What's a popp'rin' pear?

James Wheaton reported yesterday in the Jackson Citizen Patriot that the Michigan Shakespeare Festival high school tour of Romeo and Juliet was criticized for inappropriate content -- " So me take issue with sexual innuendoes in Michigan Shakespeare Festival’s High School Tour performances of ‘Romeo & Juliet’" : Western [High School] parent Rosie Crowley said she was upset when she heard students laughing about sexual content in the play afterwards. Her son didn’t attend the performance Tuesday because of another commitment, she said.  “I think the theater company should have left out any references that were rated R,” Crowley said. “I would say that I’ve read Shakespeare, and what I was told from the students, I’ve never read anything that bad.”  She said she objected to scenes that involved pelvic thrusting and breast touching and to a line in which Mercutio makes suggestive comments to Romeo after looking up the skirt of a female. The problem with cutting out the naug

Winkler lights the match

by Linda Theil When asked by an interviewer why all the experts disagree with her on the legitimacy of the Shakespeare authorship question, journalist and author Elizabeth Winkler  calmly replied, "You've asked the wrong experts." * With that simple declaration Winkler exploded the topic of Shakespearean authorship forever. Anti-Stratfordians need no smoking gun, no convincing narrative, no reason who, how, when, or why because within the works lies the unassailable argument: Shakespeare's knowledge. Ask the lawyers. Ask the psychologists. Ask the librarians. Ask the historians. Ask the dramaturges. Ask the mathematicians. Ask the Greek scholars. Ask the physicists. Ask the astronomers. Ask the courtiers. Ask the bibliophiles. Ask the Italians. Ask the French. Ask the Russians. Ask the English. Ask everyone. Current academic agreement on a bevy of Shakespearean collaborators springs from an unspoken awareness of how much assistance the Stratfordian presumptive would h